


The Long Con

by LadyDanya



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Con Artists, F/M, Mail Order Brides
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:37:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3589725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDanya/pseuds/LadyDanya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13696.html?thread=52614016#t52614016">this</a> glorious k!meme prompt:</p><p>A mail-order bride industry has popped up in Ferelden to take advantage of all the desperate women left widowed by the Blight.</p><p>After Kirkwall, Isabela is down on her luck. Fortunately this mail order bride thing sounds like the perfect scheme to get back on her feet again.  She'll agree to be a bride, breeze into some unsuspecting fool's life, fleece him blind, and be gone before binding vows can be exchanged.</p><p>Meanwhile, Cullen's sister Mia is growing increasingly worried about her brother; he sounds so lonely in his letters home. She decides to send him a <i>very</i> special name-day gift this year.</p><p>He has no idea what's about to hit him....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Con

Mia Rutherford Bonner sat serenely sipping a cup of tea, indifferent to the battle raging around her as she sorted through the sheaf of correspondence the postman had brought on his monthly trip through South Reach. Bills stacked neatly to be entered into the farm's ledger later, advertisements and pleas for charity bundled together to be fed to the fire, social letters arranged in order of how eager she was to open them - she always read the least interesting first, the best saved for last when anticipation would make the reading all the more delicious.

She transferred her teacup from one hand to the other so it wouldn't spill just before a dragon bumped her arm as it ran past, followed by a hero in a long cape, who shrieked a fierce battle cry as he waved his sword at his prey. "Careful, Leisa." she said, shifting the cup back and taking another sip as the dragon turned to roar at her in response.

She reached the middle of the stack of post - _Maker_ there were a lot of bills this month - and her calm slipped as a familiar handwriting caught her eye. She immediately reached for her penknife and ripped the envelope open, completely abandoning her system; there was one person in all of Thedas whose rare letters were far too eagerly anticipated to wait even another second to read.

It was a short letter - too short - and she read it quickly before sitting back in her chair and letting out a deep sigh. "Oh, dear." she murmured softly.

She drained her tea, then said, " _Stanton._ " in a long-practiced tone of voice that was somehow able to cut through the clamor of the dragon fight without raising to a shout. She calmly poured herself more tea, dropping a lump of sugar into her cup and stirring it as she went on, without ever looking behind her: "Please don't smite your sister."

The five year old boy behind her paused with his wooden sword raised in mid-strike, wondering yet again how she managed to _do_ that; maybe his father was right and she really _did_ have eyes in the back of her head. "Yes, Mother." he said, before lowering his toy weapon and diving off the arm of the sofa in pursuit of his foe.

She smiled fondly as her son, russet-headed like his father, ran past again, the patchwork quilt tied around his neck swirling behind him; his dark-haired sister, a year younger, forgot to roar and devolved into a fit of shrieking giggles as she scampered about with a pair of her father's breeches drawn across her shoulders, one extended arm pushed into each leg, the olive cloth fluttering around her like wings.

Mia settled in to read the letter again, more slowly this time, shrewdly searching for hidden meaning behind each word as she blew on her tea to cool it. Around her, the chaos of her bustling household reigned, but she was the calm at the eye of the storm, as always. She'd had years of long practice, first lording loftily over her brothers and sister growing up, then as the manager of her husband's farm; by the time her two children came around she was so well-practiced that she could manage the bedlam of her household without flinching, able to stop a toppled vase from hitting the floor without looking and sense a fight brewing between her children from another room and stop it with a single spoken word.

She was the ruler of her own little kingdom, a queen with three subjects who worshipped her - in other words, the luckiest damned woman in all of Thedas. Which made the things _not_ written in this letter all the more difficult to read.

There was a squeal of hinges - and then a squeal of children - and she smiled fondly, knowing without looking that her husband Rowan was standing at the door tapping the mud from his boots and hanging his cloak on its peg, a knowledge that was confirmed when he heard his laugh and the heavier than normal thump of his gait as he tried to walk with a dragon and knight attached to each of his legs. A moment passed as he indulged the children before sending them back to their games; then Mia felt a pair of warm arms slide around her shoulders, her husband stooping to drop a kiss on the crown of her head.

"Mmmm." she breathed, turning her head to feather a careful, measured kiss against his gentle lips. They had to watch themselves; even after seven years of marriage it was still so easy to let a simple kiss slide into something that wouldn't be quite appropriate with their kids in the room, and easier still from there to let it spiral into so much more. His lips were soft against hers, and she felt a delicate stirring deep in her belly; she knew that his mouth would be hot from the coffee the farmhands drank to keep themselves warm in the fields, and she was so very tempted to lean in and taste him, sliding her tongue into the velvet depths of his mouth and letting him taste the tea on her own. She stopped herself, regretfully pulling away; she glanced meaningfully over at the kids, then pressed her lips to the shell of his ear. "To be continued." she whispered, and the corners of his mouth quirked upward in a small, secret smile.

"How was your day?" she asked, and Rowan answered without leaving his spot behind her chair, his fingers moving in slow kneading circles on the swell of her shoulders, tracing their way slowly upward to tangle in the heavy curls of dark hair at the nape of her neck.

"Uneventful." he said, looking over her shoulder to frown at snippets of text he read among the pile of bills. He wouldn't question her about them, though; she knew her job as manager of the farm, just as he knew _his_ job as her husband well enough not to interfere. "Except, you'll love this. You remember Old Jonas?"

Mia turned to give him that lopsided grin that he adored so much, the right side of her mouth always so much more committed to its role than the left. "The one that married the--"

Rowan chuckled into her hair. "The one that married the." he agreed. "He stopped by today to chat, and _she_ was with him."

"She was _not!_ " Mia gasped. "I demand details! What was she like?"

"Seven feet tall, with green skin and fangs like a wolf--"

Mia punched her husband playfully on the arm. "Be serious. This is important!" she said, and Rowan made a show of pretending to think.

"Fine, okay. Her skin was more of an olive drab than a true green--" he said, deftly ducking the stack of bills that came flying over her shoulder.

"Rowan, you're killing me!" Mia said. "I've been dying to know more about her ever since we heard."

"You and the whole village." he chuckled. It was true; the sleepy hamlet outside South Reach had been anything _but_ quiet after word got out a few months before, and the gossip had spread like wildfire: the aging village idiot had finally given up on any hope of finding a wife to tolerate him through traditional means, and had sent his life's savings away for a mail-order bride.

The practice of marriage-by-mail had been born, like so many other things, of the Blight. The massacre at Ostagar had created an untold number of widows overnight; then the subsequent surge of darkspawn across Ferelden had wiped out an entire generation of rural teen boys, slaughtered unaware as they tended fields and herded flocks, leaving countless girls without suitors to marry. The Blight had been terrible in so many ways, but perhaps its impact cut deepest among the women of Ferelden, women of all ages who suddenly found themselves lacking the fathers and husbands they had always counted on to protect and provide for them, an impact that was still felt profoundly even now, more than a decade later.

But women will _always_ find a way.

Many turned to womankind's oldest last resort, and sold their bodies for coin. And others turned to another form of prostitution entirely, agreeing to enter marriages with unknown strangers out of sheer desperation. As word of Ferelden's surplus of brides spread, offers of marriage began pouring in from places as far away as Orlais, Nevarra and Antiva, with promises of coin to pay their way.

Of course, as soon as people noticed that money was changing hands there was, as there _always_ is, someone there to take advantage of the opportunity. Mail-order businesses had popped up in cities across Thedas, looking to broker deals between potential brides and the men who wanted one.

And just as there seemed to be no shortage of women who were desperate enough to do whatever it took - even leave behind their home, family and entire culture and travel halfway across the known world to marry a stranger - to survive, there too was no shortage of men willing to pay for them. Men like crotchety Old Jonas, who was too disagreeable to land a woman by any other means; men who were too socially inept or physically undesirable to meet women through traditional channels; and, of course, a very certain type of man who sought a woman who was docile and biddable, who could be molded to believe that she _owed_ him too much to risk losing her hard-won safety by having a mind or needs of her own.

Not that it was _that_ kind of service - selling humans was highly illegal outside of the Imperium, and those exorbitant fees were for the brokerages' matchmaking services and nothing else, of course. But men, too, would always find a way.

The practice had been happening across Ferelden for a decade now, but this was the first time it had ever hit so close to home. Naturally, everyone was beyond curious about their neighbor's new bride. What kind of woman could _do_ that, leave everything behind to start a new life with a stranger?

"She seemed ... nice. Normal." Rowan went on, at Mia's insistence. "A little quiet, and a little sad; but I guess that's to be expected, given the circumstances."

Mia gave him a doleful smile. "What a terrible choice to have to make." she said, lifting a hand to stroke her husband's cheek thoughtfully, feeling the rasp of his titian stubble beneath her fingertips. "Have I told you lately how thankful I am to have found you?"

"Not since breakfast." he murmured against her ear, his arms tightening around her shoulders. "I wouldn't worry about her too much; I'm sure she's just overwhelmed and homesick right now." he said to reassure his wife, hating himself for the look of sadness he'd brought to her face. "It's all new for her; someday, once she's settled in, she'll have what you have."

"What, a husband who's a proper arse? I've met Old Jonas; I daresay she's got that already." Mia said, the right side of her mouth twitching up into its usual grin again.

"Wicked woman." Rowan grinned, tucking a stray black curl behind Mia's ear. "What have you done today? Besides gossip about the neighbor's new wife, that is."

Her grin grew into a proper smile. "I'm not a gossip! I'm an archivist of the town's history. An important role, that." Then, again without looking, she added: "The cat is _not_ a horse, Stanton," and was gratified to see that released animal streak past her for the safety of the kitchen.

Rowan laughed, the surge of warm breath against the shell of her ear sending sparks along her nerves and raising gooseflesh on her skin. "Fine, then. How was your day, besides _archiving town information_? I see the postman came."

"I got a letter from Cullen." she told him, showing him the single slip of vellum, scrawled on in her brother's bold script. The letter was, as they always were, short and concise, but at least she should be glad he'd written at all; for a long span of years she'd had no contact with him at all, until she'd finally put her considerable determination to work at tracking him down. Rowan read the letter over her shoulder, his cheek pressed against her jet curls.

"Oh, no." he breathed when he reached a certain spot in the text. "He's calling her the Inquisitor again."

"He's calling her the Inquisitor again." Mia agreed.

In his last few letters he'd referred to the leader of the Inquisition by her first name, which Mia had taken as a sign of hope that _something_ , however small, was happening there. Apparently she'd been mistaken - or, more likely, _he_ had been. Either way, her heart ached for him; there was so much that went unsaid between the lines of his concise, perfunctory missives.

Rowan agreed. "He sounds so lonely," he said, reaching out a hand to indicate a sentence on the page, "here. And here," he added, fingering another line of ink. "And ... oh, Maker." He sighed into his wife's hair. "Have I told you lately how thankful _I_ am to have found _you?_ "

"Not since lunch." Mia quipped, turning to nuzzle her husband's neck. He turned his head and touched his lips to hers, a soft kiss that slowly deepened until she felt a flush of heat spread through her core.

They pulled apart when they heard a shriek from the doorway to the children's bedroom, where the knight and dragon had disappeared to change their costumes and become dwarves, having decided that, if the cat _wasn't_ a horse, it could at least pass for a nug. "Don't go in there, Leisa! They're being _gross_ again!" Stanton said in a very loud whisper.

Rowan and Mia shared a breathy laugh, nose to nose. "I wish he were happy." she said softly, resting her forehead against his. "He's had such a hard life. The abominations at Kinloch Hold, the incident at Kirkwall, the attack on Haven...."

"Growing up with you for a sister...." Rowan continued for her, and she drew away to land a playful smack on his shoulder.

"He deserves to have someone to love." Mia said wistfully. "And _I_ want to have nieces and nephews to spoil someday. It would be nice for Stanton and Leisa and Archibald to have cousins to play with before they're too old, too..."

"Hey!" Rowan said, letting his hands slide slowly down her body to cup the gently rounded swell of her belly protectively. "I keep telling you, we are _not_ naming the baby Archibald!"

She gave him an indulgent smile. "We'll see." she said, lacing her fingers with his, over her womb.

Yet the reminder of her condition gave her pause. She was barely showing; the babe wasn't due for months yet. Still, there was no reason not to have mentioned it to her brother, in any of the several letters she'd handed off to the postman earlier that day. Nor did she think she would happen to mention it in any of the letters she would sit down and jot out to him at random over the next month before the mailman arrived again, either. It felt plain wrong to rub their happiness in Cullen's face when he had so little of his own.

"I wish he could have just a fraction of what we have." Mia said, reaching out to run the back of her hand along Rowan's neck, stroking her knuckles against the hollow at the base of his throat. "Between you and the kids and the farm, I am so damned lucky it hurts. It doesn't seem right that I should have so much, while he has so little. I feel like I should share." She gave him an impish grin. "Send him one of the kids in the post, or something."

"Or a wife." Rowan said with a laugh. "Maybe a mail-order bride is the only way he'll ever get married, like Old Jonas."

Mia stilled in his arms, drawing away to look him. "Maybe it is." she said, the smile fading from her face.

"I was joking." Rowan said quickly, knowing his wife too well not to be alarmed by her change of demeanor.

"I'm not." Mia said, her dark eyes meeting his green ones. "Rowan, I really want to see my brother happy. What if we ... gave him a nudge?"

"You mean ... send him brochures on this mail-order thing, see if he's interested?" Rowan said cautiously, knowing full well that was _not_ what she meant.

She scoffed. "He would burn them as soon as he figured out what they were." she said. "He would _never_ do this for himself; he'd dismiss the idea as crazy."

"Which it is." Rowan added.

"If he were capable of taking the initiative and doing things to further his own happiness, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. I'd be too busy knitting bonnets for all my nieces and nephews." she went on. "He doesn't just need a nudge; he needs a _push_. Besides, I doubt he could afford it, but we could; the farm's been doing really well lately."

"Maker." Rowan said, holding his head in his hands. "I married a lunatic! We can't send him a bride unasked. Imagine a random stranger turning up out of the blue to marry him! What if - what if she turns out to be _weird_?"

"Or olive drab?" Mia flashed him an irrepressible grin. "At this point, anything's got to be an improvement over _this_." She picked up his letter again, picking a line at random to read aloud. "I must go; I fear I have a long night's work ahead of me, polishing my parade armor. If time permits, I may get out my leather kit and --"

"Okay, okay!" Rowan groaned. "As long as you make sure to impress upon him that I had _nothing_ to do with it. I do still hope to meet the man someday, and I think it would go much better if he _didn't_ want to smite me dead when that happens. I just have one question."

"Oh?" she asked.

"What if the baby's a girl?"

Mia wrapped her arms around her husband's neck and broke out into a laugh, her forehead pressed to his. "Still Archibald." she teased. She leaned in and dusted her lips against his, feeling desire spiral low in her belly as he tilted her head and deepened the contact into a proper kiss that went on perhaps a moment longer than it should. She let out a shuddering breath as they drew apart, dizzy with a need that they would be unable to sate for hours yet. "We should get to know Old Jonas' wife." she breathed as she clung to him, unsteady.

"Oh?" Rowan asked in surprise.

"She's got to be bored during the day while he's at work." Mia said with a pointed grin and a tip of her head toward the kids, who were still in their dwarf costumes holding a mock Proving battle armed with her best wooden spoons. "Maybe she'll find comfort in _babysitting_."

He laughed, and she embraced him, trembling with emotion. "Thank you." she whispered against his neck. "I know this will be expensive, but--"

"Hey." He cupped her face with a large farmer's hand, stroking her lower lip with the pad of his thumb. "He's important to you; that makes him important to _me_ , too. Don't worry about the money."

She gave a soft snort. "I've missed twelve years of his life; I suppose I do have a lot of name-days to make up for, after all." She drew back and looked at him, one side of her mouth quirking upward. "I guess that settles it, then." she said, the smile slowly widening into the wickedest grin Rowan had ever seen on a face that had sported far more than its fair share of wicked grins over the years.

"He's getting a _very special_ name-day present this year."


End file.
